Insight
From
Interactions™
Solution
Overview
All contents of this document are: Copyright © 2009 NICE Systems Ltd. All rights reserved.
NICE Perform Solution Overview Release 3.2
All contents of this document are: Copyright © 2009 NICE Systems Ltd. All rights reserved.
Table of Contents
Introduction ....................................................................................................................... 5
NICE Perform Highlights ................................................................................................. 6
1. Interaction Recording and Infrastructure ............................................................... 7
1.1 Enterprise Grade Recording Solutions ............................................................................................................. 8 1.1.1 TDM Recording ...................................................................................................................... 8 1.1.2 Voice over IP Recording ......................................................................................................... 8 1.1.2.1 Passive VoIP Recording ...................................................................................................... 9 1.1.2.2 Active VoIP Recording ....................................................................................................... 9 1.1.2.3 SIP Trunk Recording .......................................................................................................... 9 1.1.3 Screen Recording ...................................................................................................................10
1.2 Enterprise Management (Multi-site) ............................................................................................................... 10
1.3 Enterprise Scalability .......................................................................................................................................... 11
1.4 Business Continuity ............................................................................................................................................ 11 1.4.1 High Availability .....................................................................................................................12 1.4.2 Disaster Recovery .................................................................................................................12 1.4.3 Telephony Integration Continuity .........................................................................................12 1.4.4 Remote Site Survivability .......................................................................................................12
1.5 Centralized Storage ............................................................................................................................................ 13 1.5.1 Storage Rules .........................................................................................................................13
1.6 Security .................................................................................................................................................................. 14 1.6.1 Multi-Tier Architecture .........................................................................................................14 1.6.2 Information Security ..............................................................................................................15 1.6.3 Audit Trail ..............................................................................................................................15 1.6.4 Updates and Patches ..............................................................................................................16 1.6.5 Microsoft Active Directory Integration and Single Sign-on ...................................................16 1.6.6 Compliance with Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI-DSS) ......................16
1.7 Virtualization Support ........................................................................................................................................ 16 1.7.1 Server-Side Virtualization ......................................................................................................16 1.7.2 Client-Side Virtualization .......................................................................................................17 1.7.3 Thin Clients ...........................................................................................................................17
1.8 System Usability, Maintenance and Administration .................................................................................... 17
1.9 End-User Environment ...................................................................................................................................... 20 1.9.1 Web-based and .NET ............................................................................................................20 1.9.2 Query.....................................................................................................................................20 1.9.3 Playback .................................................................................................................................20
2. Quality Management .............................................................................................. 21
2.1 Quality Optimization .......................................................................................................................................... 22 2.1.1 Overview ...............................................................................................................................22 2.1.2 Out-of-the-Box KPIs..............................................................................................................22
2.2 Advanced Query ................................................................................................................................................. 25
2.3 Playback ................................................................................................................................................................. 27
All contents of this document are: Copyright © 2009 NICE Systems Ltd. All rights reserved.
2.4 Agent Evaluation .................................................................................................................................................. 28 2.4.1 Form Designer .......................................................................................................................29 2.4.2 Calibration .............................................................................................................................30
2.5 Coaching ................................................................................................................................................................ 32 2.5.1 Action Packages .....................................................................................................................33 2.5.2 Clip Recorder ........................................................................................................................34 2.5.3 Bi-Directional Coaching Process ...........................................................................................34
2.6 Unified Portal ....................................................................................................................................................... 35
2.7 Rules Manager ...................................................................................................................................................... 37 2.7.1 Recording Scheduler ..............................................................................................................37 2.7.2 Automatic System Scores ......................................................................................................38
2.8 Enterprise Reporting .......................................................................................................................................... 38
2.9 Multi-Tenancy....................................................................................................................................................... 39
2.10 COPC Support ............................................................................................................................................... 39
3. Interaction Analytics ............................................................................................... 40
3.1 Packaged Business Solutions ............................................................................................................................ 41 3.1.1 Customer Experience ............................................................................................................41 3.1.2 First Call Resolution ..............................................................................................................42 3.1.3 Handling Time Optimization .................................................................................................43 3.1.4 Collections Optimization.......................................................................................................44
3.2 Interaction Analytics Business Applications ................................................................................................. 45 3.2.1 Insight Manager ......................................................................................................................45 3.2.2 ClearSight ..............................................................................................................................47
3.3 Interaction Analytics Platform ......................................................................................................................... 50 3.3.1 Speech Analytics ....................................................................................................................51 3.3.2 Call Flow Analytics ................................................................................................................51 3.3.3 Desktop Analytics ..................................................................................................................51 3.3.4 Text Mining ............................................................................................................................52 3.3.5 Business Data Analytics .........................................................................................................52
4. Customer Feedback ................................................................................................ 53
4.1 Real-Time Information ....................................................................................................................................... 54
4.2 Creating Surveys ................................................................................................................................................. 54
4.3 Managing Surveys ................................................................................................................................................ 55
4.4 Managing Results and Reports ......................................................................................................................... 56
4.5 Managing Actions and Alerts ............................................................................................................................ 57
All contents of this document are: Copyright © 2009 NICE Systems Ltd. All rights reserved.
Figures Figure 1: Storage Center Archiving Schedule ............................................................................................ 13 Figure 2: Storage Center Archiving Filters ................................................................................................. 14 Figure 3: Audit Trail ......................................................................................................................................... 15 Figure 4: Site Summary Page .......................................................................................................................... 18 Figure 5: Health Check Report – Storage Center Activity .................................................................... 19 Figure 6: CTI connection Wizard ................................................................................................................. 19 Figure 7: KPI Component – Manager View ............................................................................................... 24 Figure 8: KPI Analysis– Histogram View ..................................................................................................... 25 Figure 9: Advanced Query Screen ............................................................................................................... 26 Figure 10: Query Results – Table View ...................................................................................................... 27 Figure 11: Query Results – Graphic View .................................................................................................. 27 Figure 12: Interaction Playback ..................................................................................................................... 28 Figure 13: Agent Evaluation Form ................................................................................................................ 29 Figure 14: Form Designer Wizard ............................................................................................................... 30 Figure 15: Calibrating Interactions ............................................................................................................... 31 Figure 16: Calibration Results Report ......................................................................................................... 32 Figure 17: Coaching Package ......................................................................................................................... 33 Figure 18: Action Packages ............................................................................................................................ 34 Figure 19: Clip Recorder ................................................................................................................................ 34 Figure 20: Coaching Review Status .............................................................................................................. 34 Figure 21: My Universe Portal ....................................................................................................................... 35 Figure 22: My Universe – Agent Performance .......................................................................................... 36 Figure 23: My Universe – Evaluation Status ............................................................................................... 36 Figure 24: My Universe – Scheduled Reports ........................................................................................... 36 Figure 25: NICE Perform Rules Manager – Recording Scheduler ........................................................ 37 Figure 26: NICE Perform Rules Manager – Automatic System Score ................................................. 38 Figure 27: Customer Satisfaction – Dashboard ........................................................................................ 42 Figure 28: FCR – Dashboard ......................................................................................................................... 43 Figure 29: Handling Time Optimization – Dashboard ............................................................................. 44 Figure 30: Collections Optimization – Dashboard................................................................................... 45 Figure 31: Insight Manager Application ....................................................................................................... 46 Figure 32: Call Volume Trend per Category ............................................................................................. 46 Figure 33: Categories Correlation ............................................................................................................... 47 Figure 34: ClearSight Root Cause Analysis Screen .................................................................................. 48 Figure 35: Topics Trends Analysis................................................................................................................ 49 Figure 36: Context Analysis ........................................................................................................................... 49 Figure 37: Customer Analysis ....................................................................................................................... 50 Figure 38: Categories Trend Analysis ......................................................................................................... 50 Figure 39: Linking Survey Results to the Interaction ............................................................................... 54 Figure 40: Survey Creation with the Survey Manager ............................................................................. 55 Figure 41: Question Result Trend Report ................................................................................................. 57 Figure 42: Surveys Summary in My Universe Portal ................................................................................ 57 Figure 43: Coaching Package with Attached Customer Feedback ....................................................... 58 Figure 44: Agent Performance ...................................................................................................................... 58
NICE Perform Solution Overview
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Introduction NICE Perform provides the most comprehensive solution in the market for capturing and
analyzing customer interactions to enable organizations to drive business performance,
enhance operational efficiency and ensure regulatory compliance, while maintaining low
total cost of ownership (TCO). It provides organizations with critical business insights
through unified solutions for compliance recording, quality management, interaction
analytics, customer feedback and agent coaching.
NICE Perform was first introduced in 2004. Since then, NICE introduced three major
releases that were successfully deployed at thousands of sites, gained market leadership,
and won top ranking by all major industry analysts including Gartner, Frost & Sullivan, and
Datamonitor. The solution serves leading organizations from a variety of industries, such
as financial services, telecommunications, healthcare, outsourcers, retail, service providers
and utilities.
This overview describes NICE Perform and the benefits organizations can gain from
implementing its advanced capabilities.
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NICE Perform Highlights Interaction Recording
• Low TCO– centralized capabilities, open architecture, support for multi-sites, data
centers and branches
• Compliance with latest industry regulations (e.g.- HIPAA, PCI, MiFID) through data protection, retention and business continuity capabilities
• Support for all types of recording needs– total, selective, QM and on demand recording
• Comprehensive VoIP solution portfolio including Active VoIP and SIP-based recording
• Multi-tier architecture with built-in scalability for growing capacity needs
• Support for server and client Virtualization solutions
• Resiliency and redundancy of all main system components
Quality Management
• Automated, business-driven Quality Optimization solution with pre-defined KPIs
• Advanced QM applications including Coaching, Reporter and Form Designer
• Advanced query capabilities leveraging NICE‟s multi-dimensional analytics
• Unified portal for agents, supervisors and manager with scorecards, dashboards and
trends
• Centralized Data Mart and reporting
Interaction Analytics
• Packaged business solutions for First Call Resolution, Customer Experience,
Collections Optimization and Average Handle Time Optimization
• Automatic call categorization, call volume trends and alerts
• Automatic root cause analysis using speech, call flow, customer feedback, screen
content, text and data mining analytics
• Real-time alerts and notifications
Customer Feedback
• Real-time feedback
• Action-oriented results via dashboards, reporting and alerts
• Flexible survey creation and management, no per-survey costs
• Fully unified with QM, Coaching and Interaction Analytics solutions
NICE Perform Solution Overview
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1. Interaction Recording and Infrastructure
Hundreds of organizations across the globe rely daily on NICE Perform to meet
regulatory requirements and support business goals. Whether they need to capture
every interaction for compliance or record a
random sample for quality improvement, NICE
Perform provides a reliable and resilient
compliance recording solution enabling contact
centers, trading floors and back offices to
document information, mitigate risk, and analyze
information to gain business insight.
Interaction recording is fully unified with the rest
of NICE Perform capabilities such as Interaction
Analytics, Quality Management and Customer
Feedback. This enhances the organization‟s ability to gain significant value by optimizing operational
processes and generating customer insights.
Interaction Recording Highlights:
Support for VoIP, TDM and hybrid telephony environments
Flexible recording and archiving rules
Scalable architecture for adapting to interaction recording capacity needs
Branch office and home-based agent options
Comprehensive redundancy and disaster recovery solutions to ensure high availability
Transparent access to recordings from any location
Data security through end-to-end media encryption, authentication and server hardening
Screen recording options for bandwidth optimization, NAT/PAT, terminal server and
home-based agent environments
Open architecture
Key Benefits
Capture 100% of customer interactions
Satisfy regulatory requirements
(e.g. PCI, HIPAA, MiFID)
Minimize exposure to costly
disputes and claims
Maintain audit trail of verbal
commitments
Prevent discrepancy and errors
Detect and prevent fraud
NICE Perform Solution Overview
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1.1 Enterprise Grade Recording Solutions
NICE Perform offers a reliable and resilient interaction recording solution, providing the
capability to capture, store and maintain customer interactions occurring in the
organization such as telephone conversations and screen activity.
Interaction recording is available for TDM, VoIP and hybrid environments, and addresses any type of recording need, including:
Compliance (Total) recording– all calls recording for compliance, risk management
and dispute management purposes.
Selective (Interaction-Based) recording– rule-based recording, using CTI parameters
and business data information to selectively determine which interactions will be
recorded.
QM recording– automated random call sampling for quality evaluation purposes.
Recording on Demand– recording manually initiated by agent or supervisor to
address needs such as sales verification or recording of malicious calls.
1.1.1 TDM Recording
NICE Perform provides comprehensive interaction recording capabilities in TDM
environments and supports integrations with all major telephony vendors. TDM
capturing provides the full range of recording options including compliance, interaction-
based, QM, and recording-on-demand. Interaction capturing is done either via trunk-side or extension-side recording methods.
NICE Perform TDM recording offers several unique capabilities, including:
Selective recording capabilities
Trunk-Observation recording in specific telephony environments
Trunk density– cost effective solution for selective recording environments, with 48 trunks per capturing unit
N+1 redundancy for continuous recording
1.1.2 Voice over IP Recording
NICE Perform enables recording in IP-based environments using a wide range of VoIP
recording solutions including:
Active VoIP recording– switch-level integrations with IP telephony vendors
SIP trunk recording– carrier-level integrations in SIP-based environments
Voice Recording Gateway (VRG) and Voice Recording Agent (VRA)– network-level integrations using a unique NICE appliance/module
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1.1.2.1 Passive VoIP Recording
With Passive VoIP Recording, the Real Time Protocol (RTP) audio streams are passively
“sniffed” along the IP path, using mirroring (SPAN) capabilities of the local area network
switches.
NICE Perform supports passive VoIP integrations with all major IP telephony vendors
including Aspect, Avaya, Cisco, Ericsson, Genesys, NEC, Nortel and Siemens.
1.1.2.2 Active VoIP Recording
Active VoIP recording enables centralized recording in distributed environments by
sending a replica of captured audio from a gateway, conference bridge or IP-phone to
the recording system using standard network routing. The system can reside in the data
center and record calls in the organization's branches. Active recording flattens the
organization and enables efficient handling of remote employees and home-based agents
by eliminating the need for set-up, administration and management at branches or
remote sites.
NICE Perform supports active VoIP recording integrations with all major IP telephony
vendors including Alcatel, Avaya, Cisco and Nortel.
VoIP Recording Gateway
The VoIP Recording Gateway (VRG) is a unique network appliance developed by NICE
which transforms any IP telephony environment into an active recording solution. The
VRG filters and captures VoIP traffic from the network and transmits it to a VoIP
recorder. The VRG is designed to be deployed in remote branches and data centers. It
can be used with any IP telephony vendor as it operates on the RTP level.
In branch environments, the VRG overcomes situations where active VoIP recording is
not supported due to the lack of integration with a specific IP telephony vendor or in
cases where a vendor requires additional hardware and software resources. VRGs
deployed in remote branches capture the local VoIP traffic and then send it for storage
to the VoIP recorders residing in the organization's main data center.
VoIP Recording Agent
NICE‟s VoIP Recording Agent (VRA) is a software module that resides on a user‟s PC to
enable active VoIP recording of softphones. It identifies voice traffic packets sent and
received by the user‟s softphone, duplicates them and sends them to a VoIP recorder.
The VRA can be used with any IP telephony vendor as it operates on the RTP level.
VRA implementation enables centralized recording of remote softphones, provides a
solution for recording internal softphone calls, and saves administrative effort of
maintaining port mirroring sessions.
1.1.2.3 SIP Trunk Recording
SIP (Session Initiation Protocol) is a service offered by many telephony service providers
which connects a company's PBX to the existing telephony system infrastructure via
Internet using the SIP VoIP standard. Companies adopting SIP can benefit from a low
TCO by eliminating expensive PSTN trunks, reducing network infrastructure, simplifying
NICE Perform Solution Overview
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administration, and facilitating future presence-enabled communications across multiple
channels.
NICE Perform introduces an advanced solution for recording in SIP-based environments
enabling customers to:
Switch over to a fully SIP environment
Save on PBX resources and licenses
Reduce the related maintenance costs and dedicated IT staff
Create a more flexible virtual environment (e.g.- remote/home-based agents)
Build a centralized, open recording architecture
Session Border Controller (SBC) Integration
SBC is an appliance device that provides critical control and security functions to deliver
trusted, first-class interactive communications – voice, video and multimedia sessions –
across IP network borders.
SBC integration provides several benefits to businesses, including:
Low TCO- reducing the number of devices and interfaces involved in interaction capture and replication
Decreased administration and maintenance complexity
Increased scalability and reliability (e.g.- less CPU load and buffer utilization)
Less dependency on the PBX vendor
NICE Perform enables integration with the two leading SBC product offerings from
Acme Packets and Covergence in certain telephony environments.
1.1.3 Screen Recording
NICE Perform provides a comprehensive ability to capture screen data on agents‟
workstations. NICE Perform screen recording supports all Microsoft operating systems,
optimizing the screen capturing capability for any customer environment without
compromising on quality. Screen recording offers normal or advanced compression
methods thus reducing network bandwidth load and storage capacity. It also supports
Microsoft terminal-server environments as well as Citrix solutions.
NICE Perform screen recording solution offers multi-site screen archiving to centrally
store and manage all screen captures. It supports a wide range of capturing options including selective recording, live monitoring and recording on demand.
The solution‟s scalability and modularity allow it to support a virtually unlimited number
of workstations concurrently.
1.2 Enterprise Management (Multi-site)
NICE Perform allows central, cost-effective management of multi-site environments. By
enabling central user administration, reporting, playback and querying, organizations can
better control resources, enforce policies and enhance security.
NICE Perform Solution Overview
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NICE Perform enterprise management capabilities include:
Central resource management– all resources can be managed from any location
Central user administration (including Microsoft Active Directory integration)
Central Data Mart– a single, unified data source for reporting and data access
Central rules definition
Enterprise-level querying and reporting of all data including remote sites
Playback and evaluation of interactions from any site in the organization
NICE Perform supports different multi-site configurations depending on customer needs
and resources. NICE multi-site solutions scale up to a virtually unlimited number of
sites. They support hosted or networked sites and mixed PBX environments.
1.3 Enterprise Scalability
Companies with thousands or even tens of thousands of employees located around the
world encounter a real challenge when designing their data center and IT architecture.
A key consideration is that the infrastructure must serve the entire organization no
matter how large, while accommodating future company growth and staffing changes in
different sites. As a result, it is essential to use solutions that are highly scalable.
NICE Perform is designed to support organizations of all sizes and at different locations,
and suits all types of customer environments including:
Multi-site environments where multiple large data centers operate independently
Consolidated organizations with a single data center
Hub-and-spoke with a single data center supporting different locations such as branches
NICE Perform scales up to support business growth and organizational changes such as:
More sites– support for virtually unlimited number of sites
More agents and users– support for over 50,000 agents
Enhanced recording needs– support for more than 120,000 recording channels
Extended storage requirements
Higher call rate needs
Larger number of simultaneous playbacks
1.4 Business Continuity
Changes in the political and social climate, the increasing threat of natural disasters and
the need for 24/7 service delivery lead organizations to formulate a sustainable and cost
effective business continuity plan. Businesses must ensure that critical functions are
always available as interruptions can cause severe financial or even physical losses.
NICE Perform provides business continuity across the organization for:
Recording platforms
Storage Center
Databases
NICE Perform Solution Overview
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Application servers
Remote sites and branches
1.4.1 High Availability
NICE Perform provides capabilities to protect the entire system or individual segments,
and to continue operating in case of failure or disaster. It does this by enabling the
system to continue recording calls, maintaining querying capabilities and protecting
stored information.
NICE Perform enables continuous recording even if a capture unit fails, supporting:
N+1 server chains to allow for failover in a cost-effective manner
1:1 solution for full redundancy and zero audio loss
Server clustering
TRS solution to ensure call metadata is added to the database in case of CTI failure
Storage Center redundancy to ensure continuous archiving
VoIP Recording Gateway redundancy to allow for failover if a VRG failure occurs
1.4.2 Disaster Recovery
NICE Perform‟s disaster recovery allows for deploying a standby system in a secondary
location to address disaster scenarios (e.g. - power outages, flooding) in which the
primary data center fails.
This solution allows switching to a redundant NICE Perform system and provides a
Recovery Time Objective (RTO) of about 1 hour. If a disaster occurs in the primary
data center, an organized disaster recovery procedure is followed to failover from the
primary NICE Perform system to the system in the secondary data center. Once the
problem is resolved, service is restored to the primary site through a similar, organized process.
1.4.3 Telephony Integration Continuity
Integration continuity enables NICE Perform as well as the portion that integrates it to
the telephony system to continue functioning in case of failure. NICE Perform supports
VoIP, CTI and VRSP resiliency.
1.4.4 Remote Site Survivability
NICE Perform offers enhanced capabilities to deal with network failures in branch or
remote site environments when both the capture units and Interactions Center servers
are located in the branches. The NICE Perform Interactions Center is designed to retain
an extended amount of CTI data during WAN failures. Once the remote location
regains network connectivity with the data center, the Interactions Center transfers the
CTI data to the central database, significantly reducing the risk of losing information.
NICE Perform Solution Overview
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1.5 Centralized Storage
NICE Perform offers a comprehensive solution for the varied storage needs of different
business environments. The NICE Storage Center fully integrates with the company‟s
environment, uses existing storage resources and protects investments in storage
infrastructure.
The NICE Storage Center provides organizations a centralized solution for storing
recordings on an enterprise infrastructure for long-term archiving. It integrates with a
wide range of enterprise storage solutions including:
EMC Centera
IBM Tivoli Storage Manager (TSM)
Hitachi
NetApp
NAS/SAN devices supporting CIFS or NFS protocols (virtually all storage devices)
NICE Storage Center allows central definition of storage rules and enables quick
retrieval and playback. Selective archiving and selective retention capabilities enable
archiving optimization according to business policy requirements. Furthermore,
organizations looking for enhanced resiliency can define a redundant Storage Center
server to ensure continuous archiving in case of failure.
1.5.1 Storage Rules
Storage rules allow the system administrator to define exactly when, what, where and
how to archive:
Defining when the archiving will take place and the maximum task duration, to allow
control of bandwidth resources.
Figure 1: Storage Center Archiving Schedule
NICE Perform Solution Overview
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Defining exactly which interactions should be archived, providing precise interaction
selection via smart filters such as call duration, direction, and media type.
Figure 2: Storage Center Archiving Filters
Defining where the interactions are to be archived, whether it is on a local directory, a NAS/SAN device or an ESM/CAS device.
Defining how to archive by assigning retention for each interaction, setting the
naming conventions, and deciding whether or not to use a third-party archiving.
1.6 Security
1.6.1 Multi-Tier Architecture
NICE Perform is designed around three security zones, each containing specific
operational elements of the solution. This multi-tier architecture approach allows the
segregation of data and functional elements into controlled-access zones.
Tier 1– Untrusted Zone: Contains the client workstations and communication
points outside of the network such as the Internet. Entities in Tier 1 may only
communicate with Tier 2.
Tier 2- Demilitarized Zone (DMZ): Entities in the DMZ include the NICE Perform applications and Web server that provide connectivity for clients located in Tier 1
and any external networks. Tier 2 serves as an intermediary for information and
service requests between the clients in Tier 1 and the system resources of Tier 3.
Tier 3– Trusted Zone: Houses the system‟s databases and capture units. Direct
access is not allowed between the clients in Tier 1 and the resources in Tier 3
making it extremely difficult to circumvent security access controls.
NICE Perform Solution Overview
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1.6.2 Information Security
NICE Perform takes a comprehensive approach to information security, ensuring that
sensitive data is protected and unauthorized parties cannot compromise system
integrity. Key security features include:
Data Encryption– NICE Perform provides an end-to-end media encryption approach
protecting information during every stage of its lifecycle: capture, use, transmission
and storage. It uses 256 bit Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) symmetric
encryption, the most efficient and secure algorithm for large amounts of information.
User Authentication– NICE Perform authenticates user identity with a username and password combination. Passwords are encrypted using an industry-standard 256
bit Secure Hash Algorithm (SHA).
Passwords are sent over the network only in encrypted format preventing use of
network sniffers or monitors to intercept them. An additional level of security is
provided through a Challenge Handshake Authorization Protocol (CHAP) during the
authorization process.
1.6.3 Audit Trail
NICE Perform provides a comprehensive, detailed audit trail solution that is designed to
meet IT and regulatory needs. Audit Trail enables organizations to verify and
demonstrate adherence to security policies and compliance imperatives by providing a
complete solution encompassing all data and all applications contained in NICE Perform.
These are some of the main capabilities delivered by the NICE Perform Audit Trail:
Every function performed by every user is logged and time stamped
Advanced Query application allows complete analysis of "who did what and when”
Data is automatically generated and stored in a secured database (not text/log files)
Data can be filtered by date, user, category, action and more
Figure 3: Audit Trail
NICE Perform Solution Overview
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1.6.4 Updates and Patches
NICE Perform is certified with the latest security updates, patches and virus definitions:
Proactive certification of the NICE Perform servers and applications with leading
anti-virus vendors including Symantec, McAfee and Trend Micro.
Expedited certification of Microsoft security updates.
Server hardening.
1.6.5 Microsoft Active Directory Integration and Single Sign-on
NICE Perform supports Active Directory, the industry‟s most popular user
authentication and maintenance standard, as well as single sign-on based on a user‟s
Windows username and password.
1.6.6 Compliance with Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard
(PCI-DSS)
The PCI-DSS standard sets security measures to help protect credit card holders. The
standard includes requirements for security management, policies, procedures, network
architecture, software design and other critical protective elements.
Using the above-mentioned security capabilities NICE Perform helps organizations in
complying with the requirements of the PCI-DSS standard, including the need to:
Build and maintain a secure network
Protect cardholders data
Maintain a vulnerability management program
Implement strong access control measures
Maintain an information security policy
1.7 Virtualization Support
Companies increasingly look to reduce TCO and enhance IT flexibility. Virtualization is
one option quickly gaining popularity. Companies can optimize their IT infrastructure by
deploying virtual machines that operate safely and transparently across shared hardware.
It enables organizations to consolidate servers and significantly reduce operating costs
by minimizing necessary floor space, hardware power and cooling.
NICE allows organizations to reduce the amount of overall resources consumed by
NICE Perform by supporting virtualization solutions from leading industry vendors. The
combination of these solutions and NICE Perform minimizes the total number of
servers and makes the IT center more environmentally friendly.
1.7.1 Server-Side Virtualization
NICE Perform supports server virtualization solutions from VMware and Microsoft.
Organizations that capitalize on these solutions are better equipped to affect cost
reduction across their organization and improve the overall efficiency and effectiveness
of their business.
NICE Perform supports the following virtualization solutions:
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Server consolidation –
o VMWare ESX version 3.5, with vCenter version 2.5
o Microsoft Virtual Server 2008 (Hyper-V)
High availability support for virtual machines –
o VMware VMotion
1.7.2 Client-Side Virtualization
A Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) supports the hosting of multiple operating
systems and applications used in remote locations allowing for physical and geographical
independence. Ideal for home-based agents or remote offices, VDI allows a desktop to
be centralized while still providing a typical desktop experience. VDI significantly
reduces hardware and maintenance costs as the hardware installed at the agent site is
significantly cheaper than using a standard PC or installing a server on-site.
NICE Perform supports VMware VDI, an integrated desktop virtualization solution that
delivers enterprise-class control and manageability with a familiar user experience.
VMware VDI securely connects users to virtual desktops in the data center and
provides a simple to use Web-based interface to manage the centralized environment.
1.7.3 Thin Clients
NICE supports Citrix and Terminal Server environments enabling companies to
centrally manage NICE Perform and record interactions in remote contact centers and
home-based agents that are located in thin client environments.
1.8 System Usability, Maintenance and Administration
NICE continuously focuses on enhancing customer satisfaction from its products and
services. NICE Perform includes various tools that ensure ease of installation and
maintenance. For example:
Monitoring– NICE Perform provides a simple, easy-to-use monitoring tool that
collects information from different data sources and provides clear alarms regarding
the system‟s health.
Site summary page– presents the system administrator with a complete overview of the installed system and its components and enables easier system management
and troubleshooting. It provides information such as components installed per site,
version numbers, installed updates and licensing information.
NICE Perform Solution Overview
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Figure 4: Site Summary Page
Health check reports– NICE Perform provides a set of useful health check reports
to assist IT staff in monitoring if system is functioning properly. NICE Perform scans
the system for malfunctions or potential issues and automatically sends reports using
the NICE Perform Reporter. Relevant users can also log into the system and view
the reports.
Below are some examples of health check reports:
o Recording Coverage– information about call recording, allowing the user to
know whether the system is recording according to business needs
o TRS Activity Report – information about the CTI Inserter activity
o Storage Center Quota and Available Space– information about the storage area
used by NICE Storage Center
o Storage Center Backlog – information about the audio files still in queue to be
archived
o Storage Center Activity– storage activity during a certain period (see below)
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Figure 5: Health Check Report – Storage Center Activity
CTI Wizard– allows convenient and swift configuration of an integration using a consistent and user-friendly flow.
Figure 6: CTI connection Wizard
Setup Readiness Tool– allows automatic verification of all NICE Perform
installation pre-requisites and network connectivity requirements. Customer IT can
apply this user-friendly tool to servers and client workstations and run it to verify
NICE Perform Solution Overview
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that servers meet the necessary software and hardware specification prior to the
installation.
1.9 End-User Environment
1.9.1 Web-based and .NET
The NICE Perform solution is fully Web-based, which simplifies administration and eliminates the burden of mass software deployments on personal desktops.
In addition, NICE Perform is built on the Microsoft .Net framework which provides
multiple benefits including open interfaces for future integrations, higher performance,
enhanced security and a richer user experience.
1.9.2 Query
The NICE Perform query application provides an easy-to-use tool for finding and playing
interactions, whether for compliance, sales verification, agent evaluation or coaching
purposes. NICE Perform allows users advanced query capabilities and visualization tools,
providing users a wide range of query criteria and enabling them to perform any
relevant activity on the search results.
For more details on NICE Perform query capabilities please refer to chapter 2.2.
1.9.3 Playback
In line with the rest of its centralization capabilities, NICE Perform supports playback over WAN, which streamlines operations and greatly facilitates the work of remote
agents and home-based agents.
Playback of recorded interactions can be done either by using NICE‟s streaming solution
or the Microsoft streaming server.
For more details on NICE Perform playback capabilities please refer to chapter 2.22.3.
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2. Quality Management
The contact center‟s ability to deliver a consistently satisfying customer experience
depends on effective quality management.
NICE Perform delivers comprehensive capabilities
needed for implementing a multi-faceted quality
program that works for everyone– agents,
supervisors, evaluators and managers.
Business-driven KPIs, powerful query capabilities
and flexible recording rules let the organization
track performance in real-time and evaluate
relevant interactions to develop fair, accurate and
empowering insight into agent performance.
Automated scoring and graphic visualization
highlight interactions that reveal the urgent issues and guide contact centers to the best practices for
success.
Quality Management Highlights:
24 out-of-the-box KPIs
Agent coaching for prompt feedback and overall communication
Integrated calibration tools for consistent evaluation scoring
Location-free replay and evaluation to handle centralized and decentralized operations
Automated scoring and visualization
Wizard-driven form development to easily support all evaluation types
Unified portal access to recordings, evaluations and coaching packages for agents
Multi-tenancy support for businesses requiring data segregation (e.g. – outsourcers)
Out-of-the-box reporting templates
Key Benefits
Bridge the gap between contact
center processes and business
initiatives
Align QM workflows with business goals and KPIs
Drive desirable agent behavior at
agent, group and enterprise levels
Provide tailored online coaching
Improve evaluation team
productivity and fairness
Ensure consistent service across sites and home-based agents
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2.1 Quality Optimization
Quality Optimization provides an automated business-driven QM solution that ties pre-
defined business KPIs to the QM process enabling contact center management to
monitor performance in real-time, review the most relevant interactions and take
corrective actions, all from an intuitive dashboard.
2.1.1 Overview
Quality Optimization automates the QM workflow through:
Problem identification– categorizes calls according to their content and associates
them with pre-defined KPIs. Once a KPI target is breached, the system automatically
notifies the relevant personnel and escalates the interactions for further investigation.
Root cause analysis– enables users to drill down and understand the issue‟s root cause.
The solution correlates between interaction types and agent performance allowing for quick identification of agents and groups who contributed to the KPI breach.
Corrective actions– enables creation of targeted coaching and action packages.
Continuous monitoring– presents clear metrics and automatic summary reports in
order to continuously monitor the QM process.
Quality Optimization is offered in two modes:
Language-independent Quality Optimization
Designed for companies who are interested in enhancing their QM processes by
pinpointing and solving critical business issues, as well as those that seek to integrate
performance management capabilities into their QM and coaching processes.
It includes 24 most relevant contact center KPIs for topics such as coaching, CTI,
interactions and customer feedback (see chapter 2.1.2); advanced root cause analysis capabilities; My Universe components with gauges, counters, and graphs; and drilldown
and drill through capabilities.
Analytics-based Quality Optimization
Designed for organizations that look for a complete QM solution that leverages NICE
Perform‟s Interaction Analytics capabilities with advanced call categorization and root-
cause analysis. In addition to the capabilities of the language-independent Quality
Optimization, it includes an unlimited number of analytics-based KPIs (e.g. customer
satisfaction, customer churn) utilizing NICE Interaction Analytics capabilities including
speech, text, talk-pattern, emotion and root cause analysis modules.
2.1.2 Out-of-the-Box KPIs
KPIs can help organizations define critical, pre-defined success factors and measure the
progress towards achieving these goals. Quality Optimization presents 24 out-of-the-
box KPIs that enable supervisors, managers and analysts to monitor and track major
organizational metrics in the following areas:
QM and coaching KPIs such as:
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o Percentage of evaluations on interactions for QM
o Average agent evaluation score
o Average difference of scores between calibrations and evaluations
o Percentage of completed coaching packages
• CTI-related KPIs such as:
o Percentage of interactions abandoned during queue
o Average talk time
o Percentage of interactions that were transferred
• Interaction-related KPIs such as:
o Number of interactions
o Number of interactions with screen recording
• Customer feedback KPIs such as:
o Average of overall customer satisfaction survey score
The screenshot below shows an example by presenting a manager‟s view of KPIs for
average speed of answer (ASA), average talk time (ATT), hold duration and percentage
of transfers. It also demonstrates the ability to analyze results per group or agent (ATT
in the example below).
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Figure 7: KPI Component – Manager View
Users can also perform further analysis by using the different analysis display modes such as a histogram (as in the example below), ranking tables and trends.
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Figure 8: KPI Analysis– Histogram View
2.2 Advanced Query
The NICE Perform advanced query tool enables users to run searches on all existing
system elements and perform any relevant activity on the search results. The multi-
dimensional approach and wide range of query criteria and visualization capabilities allow
users to analyze the root of business issues quickly and efficiently.
Below are some of the elements that can be used for call searching:
Speech analysis– o Keywords and phrases, including their location in the call and certainty level.
o Emotion level of each party on the call.
o Talk analysis– customer/agent bursts, number of bursts, talk-over percentage,
silence percentage, agent talk percentage, customer talk percentage, etc.
Screen events– any type of user operation, such as opening forms or applications or
entering new data.
Advanced call flow events– queue time, hung-up side, ring time, number of holds, number of transfers, actual wrap-up period and abandon from hold.
Customer feedback– survey score, question score, question result and voice
comment indication.
Business data– such as user comments or business data inserted by the user.
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Below is an example of an advanced query targeted at identifying customers at high risk
of churning. By combining elements such as emotion, keywords, call flow events, screen
events and customer feedback, managers can identify all calls that indicate a high risk of
customer abandonment. The results allow users to further drill down and understand
the root cause of the issues.
Figure 9: Advanced Query Screen
The following figures demonstrate how query results can be displayed in various
manners and include:
Related data such as evaluation score and customer feedback.
An automatic score given by the system based on pre-defined rules.
Relevant parameters such as call duration, start time and en time.
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Figure 10: Query Results – Table View
Figure 11: Query Results – Graphic View
2.3 Playback
NICE Perform lets users play voice calls and screen activity to facilitate a quick
understanding of the call‟s highlights. The graphic presentation of the interaction in the
playback window enables users to clearly see the main events of the interaction, including:
Call flow– call split between the customer and agent enabled by NICE Perform‟s
ability to provide speaker separation.
Speech events– keywords and phrases in the conversation. By simply positioning the
cursor over a specific call segment, a screen tip appears with the actual word used.
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Emotion levels- emotion levels of the customer or agent.
Screen events- screen activity such as a new screen or application opened by the agent.
Call transfers and holds.
Figure 12: Interaction Playback
2.4 Agent Evaluation
Evaluating the „live‟ performance of agents by reviewing captured interactions provides
valuable insights into their strengths and weaknesses as well as contact center
processes. These insights can be used to create employee-specific training plans and
highlight strong and weak performance.
NICE Perform‟s precision monitoring approach enables supervisors and managers to focus on the most meaningful interactions which contain insights that provide the
greatest business impact. Using NICE‟s multi-dimensional capabilities (refer to
chapter 2.2), precision monitoring allows pinpointing specific interactions that help
address operational and business concerns such as agent knowledge gaps, process
inefficiencies, adherence to script and sales best practices.
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Figure 13: Agent Evaluation Form
2.4.1 Form Designer
The NICE Perform Form Designer enables users to create new forms quickly via a
simple wizard and a user-friendly graphical user interface (GUI).
The application includes a layout template that contains all editing definitions so users
can create the visual attributes once and then apply them to any form. Once a layout is
created, all that is required to create a form is to enter the required questions and build
the scoring schema.
Users can add virtually any field including customized fields to a form. This includes
information displayed while users evaluate a call (e.g. - DNIS number and hold duration).
Forms can be easily changed, corrected or updated after they have been created. They
are also dynamic, enabling users to define conditional section parameters so that sub-
sections will be activated according to the selected answer to a specific question.
Direct access to related
recording, coaching clip
recording
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Figure 14: Form Designer Wizard
2.4.2 Calibration
Calibration is used for creating a standard reference for assessment to ensure that
evaluations are accurate and objective. When evaluators are calibrated, agents receive
fair and accurate indicators of their success based on the organizational quality
parameters.
NICE Perform integrates calibration into the quality process and provides easy-to-use
tools for each step in the calibration process:
Selecting the interaction for calibration– based on any of the query criteria (e.g. -
interactions scored below or above a certain threshold) or interactions marked for
calibration.
Evaluating the interaction– each evaluator scores the chosen interaction using the evaluation form.
Calibrating the interaction– once the evaluation phase is completed, evaluators and
supervisors can meet to review the differences and align scores based on the
organization‟s criteria. The auto summary report greatly facilitates this task by
providing detailed comparison between the evaluations.
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Figure 15: Calibrating Interactions
Coaching the evaluators– managers can create dedicated coaching materials and
share evaluation best practices with all evaluators to ensure that there is no disparity
in measuring performance quality.
Maintaining alignment– NICE Perform contains dedicated calibration reports to help
managers ensure quality score alignment over time.
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Figure 16: Calibration Results Report
On top of the „traditional‟ calibration process NICE Perform empowers agents to self-
evaluate their interactions. Agents can use calibration to compare their own score vis-à-
vis the score given by supervisors or QA managers. This process helps identify gaps or
disparities between the agents and their supervisor‟s evaluation.
2.5 Coaching
NICE Perform Coaching is a valuable tool for QM managers, team leaders and trainers
to create a closed-loop coaching process by developing training content and sending it
to agents.
The solution allows for a wide scope of actions enabling trainers and managers to focus
on key factors such as agent knowledge, customer satisfaction and operational
processes. The NICE Perform Coaching solution can be used for actions such as:
Providing targeted coaching materials to address agent knowledge gaps
Delivering coaching packages to agents to notify on new policies
Sharing examples of best practice calls with agents and groups
Coaching is fully integrated with the rest of the NICE Perform solution enabling creation
of coaching packages directly from the interaction and linking related data such as the
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interaction itself, call evaluation, customer feedback, recorded clip, as well as any
external file.
Figure 17: Coaching Package
2.5.1 Action Packages
The NICE Perform Coaching allows a wide scope of actions on top of the traditional
agent coaching. Action-oriented packages enable users to focus on agents, customers or
processes and thus provide supervisors and quality specialists with more options to act
upon meaningful interactions or any other type of important data.
Supervisors and QM Specialists can use action packages for processes such as:
Send call for evaluation or calibration
Send best practice calls to the training department to be used as examples
Send potential high risk calls to the Retention department
Insert related
materials
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Figure 18: Action Packages
2.5.2 Clip Recorder
The clip recording tool is an authoring and editing tool for creating audio and video clips
to develop insightful training material to be shared with agents. The clip recording tool
provides the means to coach agents based on the specific knowledge gaps. Supervisors
and specialists can create a clip based on recorded interactions, cut or hide parts, and
record voice annotation- all via their telephone extension.
Figure 19: Clip Recorder
2.5.3 Bi-Directional Coaching Process
NICE Perform empowers agents to be part of the coaching process. Agents can
comment on coaching packages and send coaching requests via the system (e.g. - receive
a frontal coaching session).
Furthermore, a dedicated component in the My Universe portal allows supervisors to
easily track coaching packages status and check whether team members reviewed the
materials sent.
Figure 20: Coaching Review Status
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2.6 Unified Portal
The My Universe portal is an essential component of the NICE Perform solution. It
empowers contact center managers, business users, supervisors and agents to get an at-
a-glance view of their most relevant information, manage daily tasks and drill down to
specific data.
Figure 21: My Universe Portal
My Universe accommodates information from all NICE Perform applications and
modules including Quality Management, Interaction Analytics, Customer Feedback,
Coaching and Reporter, as well as information from the IEX TotalView Workforce
Management solution. Based on the data, it provides custom views to each stakeholder in the organization allowing each individual to focus on the information relevant to
his/her role.
The portal includes information components such as:
Agent Performance Scorecard– enabling supervisors to easily compare agent
performance based on the most important performance metrics.
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Figure 22: My Universe – Agent Performance
Evaluation Status– displays the number of evaluations completed and the number of
evaluations left within a specific time period.
Figure 23: My Universe – Evaluation Status
Quality Score Trends– score trends and comparisons for agents, teams and sites.
Productivity Trends– agent productivity scores over time compared with the
average productivity of team members.
Business Highlights– important interactions for management‟s attention (e.g.- customers at high risk of churn, interactions of VIP customers, critical customer
complaints).
Scheduled Reports– easy access to subscribed reports.
Figure 24: My Universe – Scheduled Reports
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2.7 Rules Manager
The NICE Perform Rules Manager is a single, centralized application that allows users to
define recording and call tagging rules. Furthermore, it enables building scoring formulas
as well as defining classification and storage rules. Users can focus on different parts of
the organization and define the appropriate rules for each group.
2.7.1 Recording Scheduler
The NICE Perform Rules Manager Scheduler initiates interaction recording according to
defined criteria. Authorized users can set the system to record interactions according
to criteria such as:
Negative, selective and QM recording plans
Record specific agents or groups
Record according to different sampling methods
Record according to call direction (inbound, outbound, internal, more)
Record according to the media type (voice, screen, both)
Record calls from specific dialed numbers
Recording can be scheduled on a daily, weekly or monthly basis.
Figure 25: NICE Perform Rules Manager – Recording Scheduler
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2.7.2 Automatic System Scores
NICE Perform provides contact centers auto-scoring capabilities to help users focus
their QM efforts where they are most needed. Authorized users can define interaction
scoring formulas and an unlimited number of rules according to their needs.
For example, customer satisfaction score can be calculated by creating a formula that
combines call flow data, audio analysis, CTI events and emotional expressions.
Figure 26: NICE Perform Rules Manager – Automatic System Score
2.8 Enterprise Reporting
The NICE Perform Reporter is a comprehensive platform to design, generate and
distribute analysis reports. It enables organizations to convert large amounts of data into
crucial business insights and provides enterprise-level querying and reporting for the
entire business.
The NICE Perform Reporter uses a centralized Data Mart to enable seamless access to
information across multiple sites as well as central definition of authorizations. This
architectural approach provides unmatched reporting flexibility and performance while
maintaining data integrity, optimizing network bandwidth, and providing access to
information. The NICE Perform Reporter is based on the Microsoft .NET framework,
providing a friendly user interface.
The NICE Perform Reporter facilitates operations through:
A wizard-guided, template-based process making it simple to create and run
complex reports.
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Efficient management and analysis of data using minimal time and resources.
Crystal Reports engine for easy template customization and custom report creation.
Broad scheduling and subscription options to streamline report production and
distribution.
Support for multiple supervisory or operational groups with a single report
template.
Drill-down to information such as interaction recordings, evaluation forms and coaching packages.
Multiple output formats including Crystal RPT, Adobe PDF, MS Excel, Word, HTML
and text.
2.9 Multi-Tenancy
Multi-tenancy is used to describe the support of several separate entities under one
platform where a tenant represents a customer, department or a business unit who uses
the service.
NICE Perform provides multi-tenancy capabilities to address the challenges of
organizations in managing the security, resource and permission requirements needed
when serving multiple entities/customers on the same recording and QM infrastructure.
This solution is designed to address outsourcers‟ need for segregating the applications
and information they deliver to customers. It is also suitable for mid to large-sized
contact centers that need to maintain separation between different departments.
Support for multi-tenancy environments is reflected across the various NICE Perform
components including:
Access to data (e.g.- recorded interactions, agent evaluations)
Access to queries
Access to reports
Access and use of different evaluation forms
Access to views in the My Universe portal
2.10 COPC Support
Customer Operations Performance Center (COPC) is a leading contact center
standard. It is a set of management practices, key metrics, measurements and training
for customer-centric service operations. COPC focuses on the various aspects of
contact center operations including quality management, customer satisfaction, staff
attrition and process efficiency.
NICE supports the COPS standard by enabling customers to design evaluation forms in
a COPC-compliant manner, for example by defining critical questions and flexible
scoring mechanism, and to create COPC-related reports such as question accuracy and
FCR tracking reports.
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3. Interaction Analytics
Business success depends on making the right decision at the right time. Decisions are
based on a wide variety of information – industry reports, customer satisfaction surveys,
random call recordings, even intuition and gut
feelings.
Organizations are often missing the plain hard facts.
NICE Perform Interaction Analytics delivers
quantifiable, accurate and immediate business insight
that improves decision-making and drives better
performance.
Analyzing contact center interaction data empowers
organizations to meet short-term objectives such as
improving First Call Resolution and reducing Average
Handle Time, as well as strategic goals such as predicting customer churn, increasing customer
loyalty and satisfaction, and increasing marketing
campaign effectiveness.
Interaction Analytics Highlights:
100% captured interaction analysis
Out-of-the-box business solutions with pre-defined categories, lexicons, reports and
dashboard views
Continuous categorization of interactions
Ongoing trend tracking and real time alerts
Automated root-cause analysis
Speaker separation for “who said what”
Key Benefits
Automatically analyze every captured interaction
Base business decisions on
quantifiable, accurate information
Identify customers at risk in real-
time
Expose root cause for customer dissatisfaction
Decrease the number of repeat
callers
Reduce Average Handle Time (AHT)
Uncover and eliminate compliance
issues
Proactively detect and respond to developing trends and issues
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3.1 Packaged Business Solutions
NICE Perform features out-of-the-box packaged business solutions for First Call
Resolution (FCR), Customer Experience, Collection Optimization, and Handling Time
Optimization.
These Business Solutions are based on the experience gained from hundreds of successful deployments and include pre-defined Categories, Lexicons, Alerts, Reports
and Dashboard views that enable customers gaining quick ROI.
3.1.1 Customer Experience
Companies constantly aim to increase customer satisfaction by optimizing customer
service, adapting their offerings and focusing retention efforts in the right place.
NICE Perform Customer Experience Business Solution provides a highly accurate, cost
effective, interactions-based method to predict which of the customers calling to the
contact center is likely to leave and why. By incorporating the voice of the customer
into the analysis companies can create targeted retention efforts based on the actual
customer issues, significantly increasing customer satisfaction.
Identify customers at risk – identifies and categorizes calls which may indicate
future churn. The solution analyzes interactions using content analysis by keywords
and phrases, call flow analysis, talk pattern analysis and emotion detection. Potential
indicators may be specific words or phrases used by the customer, mentioning of a
competitor‟s name, or emotion level that is heightened by frustration.
Improve accuracy and take proactive measures – seamlessly integrates with
transactional churn models to create a holistic, more accurate predictive model. By
integrating voice-based intelligence with CRM and BI transaction data, NICE is able
to increase churn prediction accuracy and identify high risk callers that would not be
detected by a transaction model alone.
Targeted Action – performs automatic root cause analysis in order to understand
the underlying issues leading to dissatisfaction. A combination of speech, text and
business data analysis provides detailed, actionable results which can be used by
various departments such as the Quality, Retention and Marketing teams.
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Figure 27: Customer Satisfaction – Dashboard
3.1.2 First Call Resolution
No measure has an impact on contact center performance as First Call Resolution
(FCR) – an essential indicator that is at the core of a contact center‟s operational
efficiency. FCR is directly correlated with key contact center metrics and has significant
impact on customer satisfaction, operational costs and employee satisfaction.
NICE Perform First Call Resolution Business Solution provides an automated, accurate
and cost-effective means to measure, analyze, and improve FCR rates:
Repeat call identification and categorization – automatically detects non-FCR calls by correlating keywords and phrases in the captured call (e.g. - “this is second time I
am calling”), customer feedback data (“is this the first time you are calling regarding
this issue?”) and business data from the CRM (e.g.- cancellation policy reviewed by
agent). The calls are then categorized according to the specific call types correlated
with FCR issues.
Automated root cause analysis – automatically tracks the initial call to understand
why it was not resolved. The solution performs automated root cause analysis and provides reports revealing the top reasons behind repeat calls, frequent topics that
were raised, and the percentage of interactions not resolved during the first call.
Users can drill down from the report to playback the actual call.
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Targeted action – insights into FCR issues empowers management to take the
necessary corrective action which can include agent training to address knowledge
gaps, adjustment of back office processes, Web information updates, or correcting a
technical problem.
Figure 28: FCR – Dashboard
3.1.3 Handling Time Optimization
NICE Perform Handling Time Optimization Business Solution provides organizations
with an innovative approach and quick turnaround for measuring, analyzing and
improving interactions handle time.
The solution offers valuable integration with the organization‟s existing business
processes, enabling organizations to automatically analyze customer interactions and
perform root cause analysis in order to identify potential calls‟ length-related problems.
After identifying issues and the potential areas for improvement, organizations can immediately act upon these insights and drive better performance.
The solution constitutes an end-to-end solution, including comprehensive reports,
dashboards, and workflows that enable rapid deployment and provide an accelerated
return on investment.
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Figure 29: Handling Time Optimization – Dashboard
3.1.4 Collections Optimization
In a tough economic climate, lenders are looking for ways to optimize the collection
process and minimize risks. Firms strive to increase collection effectiveness, but must
also comply with strict regulations which govern the collection process and prohibits
abusive collection practices.
NICE Perform Collection Optimization Business Solution integrates the voice of the
customer into the collection process and provides firms with early indicators and
warning signs of future payment behavior – for example discovering whether customers
lost their jobs, are unable to refinance existing loans or suffer unexpected healthcare
costs.
Increasing collection effectiveness – better performance at every stage of the
collection process:
o Increase right-party contact rate– analyzing contact methods fosters best
practices and leads to better agent introduction techniques, identification of
contact avoidance, and missed opportunities for alternative contact methods.
o Increase promise rate– interaction analysis and business data integration (e.g.
CRM, ERP) allow measuring payment promise rates and identifying
exceptions such as agents with low rates or long calls with no promises. This
can be used to provide targeted coaching to underperforming agents.
o Increase kept rate and payment rate– creating a direct link between the
interaction and collection result allows companies to measure kept promise
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rates and payment ratio as well as analyze calls to identify best practices or
root-causes of broken promises.
Complying with regulations– predefined word lexicons and emotion detection
enable identifying abusive language and threatened customers. Alerts allow managers
to promptly resolve the situation by drilling down to the interaction, understanding
the issue and taking an appropriate action.
Protecting the ability to collect– monitoring all calls ensures that agents adhere to scripts and disclose the required information. Once the system detects a potential
violation, an alert is sent, notifying of the potential risk.
Figure 30: Collections Optimization – Dashboard
3.2 Interaction Analytics Business Applications
3.2.1 Insight Manager
The Insight Manager application automatically classifies customer interactions into
definable categories based on speech and screen analytics, CTI events, customer
feedback, advanced filters and business rules. The application improves business
performance by providing managers with insights that range from the operational to the
strategic, for example:
The reasons for customer calls (e.g. - product inquiries, billing issues, cancellation)
Top service issues (e.g. - lost delivery, damaged products, missing items)
Identify cross-sell/up-sell attempts made by agents
Identify calls in which a certain competitor name was mentioned by the customer
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Figure 31: Insight Manager Application
Call categories drives multiple business insights and targeted actions:
Call volume trends – displays call volume deviation of each category over time.
Figure 32: Call Volume Trend per Category
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Define alerts on call volume deviation – users can define that once the system
detects a deviation from the normal call volume, an immediate alert will be sent to
selected groups or people in the organization, allowing them to address the issue
proactively and gain valuable time.
Alert on events – users can define alerts on specific category events such as detected phrases (e.g. - “close the account”) or new category results added (e.g. -
alert on new results added to the „Customers at Risk‟ category).
Categories correlation – The Insight Manager Correlations module presents the
links between different categories, allowing users to better understand the
commonalities between different issues (e.g. - how billing issues correlate with
dissatisfied customers).
Figure 33: Categories Correlation
3.2.2 ClearSight
The ClearSight application uses advanced data mining, algorithms and OLAP tools to
find patterns, correlations and in-depth understanding of underlying issues. It provides a
graphically intuitive presentation of root cause analysis, enabling business users to
implement fact-based decisions. With ClearSight, organizations can formulate and evolve
the analysis as needed to obtain the best results and discover new insights more quickly
and easily.
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Figure 34: ClearSight Root Cause Analysis Screen
ClearSight provides advanced root cause analysis through:
Topics trends analysis– provides users with the trend of the root causes (topics) compared to the trend of the overall call volume of the category, thus enabling users
to understand and focus on specific topics that are correlated to high/low call
volume trends.
In the example below, the trend of the „Customer Satisfaction‟ category is compared
to the trend of the related topics that the system automatically identified. The user
can learn that the topics „misinformed‟ and „overdraft interest‟ explain the increase
in dissatisfaction calls, and can then act upon this insight.
Most frequent
topics in customer
interactions
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Figure 35: Topics Trends Analysis
Visual Context Explorer– enables the user to further explore the specific root
causes and insights that were surfaced in the topic analysis. For each topic in the list,
the user can perform context analysis in order to get the statistically significant
keywords that relate to this topic.
In the example below, the user can understand that the topic „misinformed‟ is highly
related to the issues of „reimbursement‟, „overdraft policy‟ and „overdraft interest‟.
Figure 36: Context Analysis
Correlation of topics
to understand the
most relevant context
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Customer analysis– analyzes information concerning customers, helping the user to
get insights on specific customer characteristics and behavior in each category.
For example, the user can get the distribution of customer dissatisfaction calls
according to customer type (e.g. Platinum, Gold, Silver), customer seniority and age,
or geographic location.
Figure 37: Customer Analysis
Trends analysis– displays the trends of each category over time and allows zooming
in on specific periods.
Figure 38: Categories Trend Analysis
3.3 Interaction Analytics Platform
NICE Perform Interaction Analytics utilizes a comprehensive multi-dimensional
approach, including the broadest set of analytics engines. Integrated into a unified
solution, this unique combination enables to extract the maximum business insights
from customer interactions in a rapid, cost-efficient manner.
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NICE Perform‟s analytics engines include:
3.3.1 Speech Analytics
NICE Perform‟s speech analytics leverages advanced engines working in synergy with
one another, thus providing maximum accuracy, throughput and flexibility.
Phonetics Indexing– transforms the immense quantity of customer calls into a
searchable voice database, enabling ad-hoc queries to retrieve calls that contain any
given word or phrase.
Keyword Spotting– identifies pre-defined words or phrases within interactions, and generates information concerning the position of words in the interactions.
Speech-to-Text– transcribes calls, creating a text file with the full utterances
identified. The transcribed call is then fully searchable for retrieval and analysis.
Emotion Detection– flags heightened emotional levels of either the customer or the agent during the call. Uses physical voice parameters such as pitch, pacing and
volume, to gauge the level and presence of emotion in a conversation.
Talk Analysis– pinpoints periods of silence and overlaps between the agent‟s voice
and the customer‟s voice, as well as the percentage of the call dominated by either
side of the interaction.
Speaker separation– the ability to separate both sides of a conversation into different audio tracks. Essential capability to understand which side (customer or
agent) said what.
3.3.2 Call Flow Analytics
NICE Perform advanced CTI engine processes and analyzes CTI information, providing
the basis for advanced business analysis and actionable business performance data. Based
on predefined parameters and rules, the CTI engine performs an advanced CTI analysis,
which is then combined and correlated with the rest of NICE‟s multi-dimensional
analytics.
3.3.3 Desktop Analytics
NICE Perform Desktop Analytics (a.k.a. ScreenSense) allows extracting or tagging any
type of interaction as well as triggering a recording based on the agent‟s screen activity
or information appearing on the screen (e.g. - customer name, segmentation and
monthly bill).
Desktop Analytics detects activity on the agent‟s screen, extracts valuable information,
and correlates it with the interaction. Multi-dimensional analysis of screen events as well
as extracted data and other data already in the system helps improve business
performance.
With Desktop Analytics extracting existing customer information from CRM
applications and correlating it with recorded interactions becomes an easy task. Using
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customer information to search for and replay interactions can save a significant amount
of time and reduce costs.
3.3.4 Text Mining
NICE Perform text mining capabilities include analysis of e-mail, chat and web
correspondence, generating valuable insights from text-based interactions and
correlating them with the related voice-based interactions.
3.3.5 Business Data Analytics
NICE Perform‟s solution architecture facilitates integration of data from other
enterprise systems such as CRM and ERP. It integrates relevant customer data such as
transactional information, preferences, restrictions and statistics into the analysis
process, thus providing a comprehensive, consolidated view of the customer
experience.
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4. Customer Feedback
Many companies believe that they deliver exceptional customer service. However, many
customers frequently disagree with that perception.
In order to optimize customer satisfaction,
organizations need to determine the most effective
way to collect information about the customer
experience. Gathering relevant, immediate and
comprehensive customer feedback is fundamental to
understanding the customer and improving
organizational performance and productivity.
NICE Customer Feedback helps companies close
the customer satisfaction gap by:
Obtaining accurate and timely information from customers
Correlating feedback information with specific
interactions to determine the fundamental causes of customer satisfaction or
dissatisfaction
Aligning quality processes with customer expectations and educating agents to deal with the causes of satisfaction gaps
Analyzing customer satisfaction and evaluation trends to maintain alignment
Customer Feedback Highlights:
Real-time feedback
Action-oriented results via dashboards, reporting and alerts
Integration with contact center solutions such as Quality Management, Coaching and
Interaction Analytics
Feedback responses linked to captured interactions
Cost effective– no per-survey costs
Key Benefits
Build the voice of the customer
into business processes
Align quality management and coaching with customer
expectations
Collect accurate and timely
information from customers
Provide real-time insight to
business users
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4.1 Real-Time Information
Customer Feedback allows organizations to gather feedback at the end of a call, by
directing the customer to an automatic survey on the IVR. Customer Feedback is fully
integrated with the rest of the NICE Perform capabilities and provides an important
element of the NICE Perform multi-dimensional analytics.
The solution enables organizations to enhance customer satisfaction, focus on individual
or team performance, and improve overall service and processes. Through the
reporting system stakeholders can take real-time actions for corrective measurements
to ensure customer satisfaction, improve first call resolution, reveal coaching needs or
identify upsell opportunities.
The solution is easily operated by managers and specialists who can quickly create
reports and surveys or customize existing surveys and questions at any time. The tight
integration with the NICE Perform recording platform allows the QM team to link
surveys to the actual interactions they resulted from, which enables much better
understanding of the root-cause of issues.
Figure 39: Linking Survey Results to the Interaction
4.2 Creating Surveys
The Customer Feedback solution is highly flexible and allows organizations to create
and deploy multiple types of feedback surveys including Relationship type surveys (tend
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55
to focus on general satisfaction levels), Transaction type surveys (tend to focus on
recent events), and Topical surveys (tend to focus on key topics that are of interest to
management).
The Customer Feedback Survey Manager enables an organization to create customized
surveys which are then presented to the customer at the end of an interaction. Users
can develop a variety of survey types which can be used for different call types, events
and campaigns. Surveys can be created in multiple languages to accommodate different
audiences.
Figure 40: Survey Creation with the Survey Manager
The Survey Manager allows intelligent, dynamic survey flow capabilities (context-based
questions) that seamlessly redirect the customer to the relevant questions within the
survey, based on customer responses.
4.3 Managing Surveys
Customer Feedback surveys can be implemented using the following survey flows:
Post call – automatic routing: The system decides whether or not the call is sampled for customer feedback based on user-defined rules.
Post call – manual routing: The agent manually transfers the customer to the survey.
Direct connect: Customers call directly to the survey. For example, customers can use the IVR self-service option and call directly a 1-800 number without talking to an
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agent first. Allows companies to complete the standard ways of collecting customer
feedback.
4.4 Managing Results and Reports
Survey results collected with NICE Customer Feedback provide an in-depth
understanding about customer satisfaction as well as the performance of the entire organization, specific departments and individual agents. The information can be viewed,
analyzed and customized by the different stakeholders in several ways:
Reports delivered to the designated users
Survey results via multi-dimensional queries
Survey results via My Universe portal
NICE Customer Feedback is fully integrated with the NICE Perform Reporter,
simplifying the generation and distribution of feedback information. These are some of
the predefined Customer Feedback reports:
Trend-lining reports by agents, groups and questions:
o Feedback Results Trend: Customer feedback score trends
o Question Result Trend: Trends of specific question score
Segmenting (filtering) reports:
o Feedback Score by Parameter: List of surveys that match a specific criteria
o Feedback Summary: List of surveys for a specific period
Distribution reports:
o Feedback Result Distribution: Distribution (split) of question score
Comparison reports:
o Feedback vs. Quality Score: Comparison of feedback and evaluation results
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Figure 41: Question Result Trend Report
4.5 Managing Actions and Alerts
After surveys were created, deployed and results were gathered, stakeholders at all
levels can now act upon this meaningful information.
Business users, supervisors and agents can receive customer feedback results directly to their personalized My Universe portal.
Figure 42: Surveys Summary in My Universe Portal
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Contact center supervisors are able to take immediate action and provide their
agents with the necessary coaching to improve their customer service skills. They
can also attach the survey to the coaching package in order to share it with agents.
Figure 43: Coaching Package with Attached Customer Feedback
Supervisors can compare productivity, evaluation and customer feedback for each of
their agents. They can also use the results to compare statistics of their group with
other groups in the company.
Figure 44: Agent Performance
Disclaimer Information in this document is subject to change without notice and does not represent a commitment on the part of NICE Systems Ltd. The systems described in this document are furnished under a license agreement or nondisclosure agreement. All information included in this document, such as text, graphics, photos, logos and images, is the exclusive property of NICE Systems Ltd. and protected by United States and international Copyright laws. Permission is granted to view and photocopy (or print) materials from this document for personal, non-commercial use only. Any other copying, distribution, retransmission or modification of the information in this document, whether in electronic or hard copy form, without the express prior written permission of NICE Systems Ltd., is strictly prohibited. In the event of any permitted copying, redistribution or publication of copyrighted material, no changes in or deletion of author attribution, trademark legend or copyright notice shall be made.
360o View, Alpha, Customer Feedback, Dispatcher Assessment, Emvolve Performance Manager, Encorder,
eNiceLink, Executive Connect, Executive Insight*, FAST, FAST alpha blue, FAST alpha silver, Freedom, Freedom Connect, IEX, Interaction Capture Unit, Insight from Interactions, Investigator, Last Message Replay, Mirra, My Universe, NICE, NICE Analyzer, NiceCall, NiceCall Focus, NiceCLS, NICE Inform, NICE Learning, NiceLog, NICE Perform, NiceScreen, NICE Storage Center, NiceTrack, NiceUniverse, NiceUniverse Compact, NiceVision, NiceVision ALTO, NiceVision Harmony, NiceVision Mobile, NiceVision NVSAT, NiceVision PRO, Performix Technologies, Playback Organizer, Renaissance, Scenario Replay, ScreenSense, Tienna, TotalNet, TotalView, Universe, Wordnet and other product names and services mentioned herein are trademarks and registered trademarks of NICE Systems Ltd. All other registered and unregistered trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
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About NICE
NICE Systems (NASDAQ: NICE) is the leading provider of Insight from Interactions solutions
and value-added services, powered by advanced analytics of unstructured multimedia content –
from telephony, web, radio and video communications. NICE‟s solutions address the needs of
the enterprise and security markets, enabling organizations to operate in an insightful and
proactive manner, and take immediate action to improve business and operational performance
and ensure safety and security. NICE has over 24,000 customers in more than 150 countries,
including over 85 of the Fortune 100 companies. More information is available at
http://www.nice.com.